Creditinfo study: number of employees decreased by 90,000 at the end of 2016

The number of employees in the companies that submitted financial reports for the past year decreased by 90,000 at the end of 2016, to 3.91 million, according to a study published on Thursday.

According to the survey, the overwhelming majority of companies in Romania (91.5 percent) are micro-enterprises that employ nine employees at the most; 8.19 percent have between 10 and 49 employees; 1.49 percent have between 50 and 249 employees, and 0.29 percent, (a little over 1,600 companies) have more than 250 employees.

The study also noted that corporate turnover fell from 1,200 billion in 2015 to 1,195 billion in 2016.

"The number of companies registered in Romania increased by 19,000 from the previous year, reaching 556,000, as against 537,000 in 2015. The turnover decreased from 1.2 trillion lei in 2015 to 1.195 trillion lei in 2016. The weight of companies with turnovers of up to 2 million lei was 91 percent, slightly up from the previous years. The share of companies having registered turnovers in excess of 49 million lei decreased from 0.53 percent in 2015 to 0.5 percent in 2016," according to the Creditinfo study.

However, although there are fewer companies and fewer employees, corporate profit was on a rising trend: 96 billion lei in 2016, from 89 billion in 2015 and 83 billion in 2014. At the same time, the losses recorded by Romanian companies decreased over the past three years: from 54 billion lei in 2014 to 44 billion in 2015 and 34 billion in 2016.

"Profitability of Romanian companies followed a rising trend, both when only the profit obtained is factored in, and when losses reported at the national level is introduced in the equation. The decrease in losses reported by Romanian companies, in conjunction with profit growth and a relatively stagnant business turnover, doubled their profitability in 2016 (5.15 percent) from 2014 (2.55 percent)," according to Creditinfo CEO Aurimas Kacinskas.

Topping the rankings of most profitable business areas is construction of residential and non-residential buildings; the second place was taken by real property letting and sub-letting, while the third place was occupied by cereal farming.

"The ranking of the most profitable business areas in Romania has remained unchanged over the last three years. The first place is held by construction of residential and non-residential buildings, where profits exceeded 3.4 billion lei, still down from 3.6 billion lei in 2015. The second most profitable area is real property letting and sub-letting, with profits of nearly 2.8 billion lei in 2016, up significantly from the fourth place and 2 billion lei in 2015. Next most profitable is cereal farming, with profits in excess of 2.5 billion lei, also on the rise from the previous year, when it ranked sixth with less than 1.9 billion lei."